First Among Sequels: Prologue
by Draconic
Summary: Prompt: In which a story takes place after the end of a series which has yet to be completed. The actual story will have a different name. I'd like to set a goal among the writers in this fandom. Look inside to read the rules, as well as the prologue that you'd be starting with.


**Note to the readers:**

**Let me be clear about something: this story is a prompt. It's a challenge for other writers to take. I've tried this once before, but it went rather poorly, probably because I didn't start with a base. Essentially, you would copy and paste the content of this first chapter into a new story, and continue it as your own story with me getting credit for the first chapter, but otherwise having very little power beyond enforcing my original specifications). Here are the rules:**

**1. You must be able to keep up the same level of quality as I do. I'm not that great, so I think it's a reasonable request. So preferably you'd have perfect grammar and the only errors you'd make would be the occasional spelling mistake or absent word, and the chapters would be between 3000 and 7,000 words long. Just for reference, this one was just over 3,700.**

**2. Keep the characters in-character.  
ie. Kanda is sullen, uses anything as an excuse to be angry, and utterly despises Allen as opposed to the other thing. If they were trapped in a room together, they would try to brutally maul one another, **_**not**_** start a heavy petting session.)**

**3. Any and all pairings must be canon (ie. Krory/Eliade,* Lavi/Chomesuke). Personally, I support Allenalee, but that isn't technically a canon pairing because Allen isn't really paired with anyone.**

**4. God help you should you bring in any personal OCs. Self-insertion just is not cool. I've seen it done well exactly once. Avoid OCs as well. You can bring in OCs as minor characters, or as parts of the pseudo-supporting cast as long as they don't stay on the stage for too long. Yes, I am a tyrant, but our fanfiction community has a Mary-Sue infestation, so I try to avoid OCs as much as possible. Even I use one in the sample prologue, but…well, you'll see…**

**5. PM me if you want more info on how to continue the story, because I have an outline that you can follow.**

**6. No bringing people back from the dead, unless circumstances call for it. This will only happen once, and the person is already decided on**

**7. In a way, this is the most important rule, because it involves something that seems very insignificant until you realize it's missing and everything is just that much less meaningful for it. So here it is: _Don't forget about Timcampy!_ Very important! And here's why: Because even _I_ with my hippo-sized ego forgot about him until the very last minute and had to go over the chapter to fit him in. Of course, he doesn't really feature much in a fight, so use him mostly in the more, shall we say 'domestic' moments.  
**

***Eliade isn't that person, so despite being a pairing, she cannot appear in this story outside of Krory's memories. I agree… that's a damn shame because she's pretty cool, but I'm only risking character resurrection once. Trust me, it's a dangerous game to play.  
**

**So, now that I've written out the rules, here is the first chapter of the story:**

* * *

**Prologue****…**

It had been one year.

The Millennium Earl was gone. The Noah Clan had been defeated.

The Black Order was becoming less and less relevant every day now as the exorcists continued to destroy all of the masterless akuma that remained around the world. It was a depressing thought, and it was one that plagued Lenalee every day now, knowing that one day, maybe tomorrow, maybe a year from now, she would be told that she would have to pack her bags and leave her home. Her family. All she could do was smile and continue working. What was most important now was to cherish what little time she might have left with these people. Still, she couldn't always stop herself from breaking down when she was alone. Whenever this happened, she would wait until her tears dried up and go see her brother, or occasionally Allen or Lavi, if they were around at least.

Today was one of the better days though. It hadn't been any different from any other day only a few minutes ago, but that was before Reever had informed her that her brother had given her an assignment with Allen and Lavi. Now all she had to do was hope that the three of them could get out of headquarters before Komui's overprotective instincts kicked in and he started trying to kill her partners for the mortal sin of going anywhere with her while remaining loyal members of the opposite sex.

This in mind, she pushed open the doors to her brother's office. After a whole year of virtually nothing, she had expected the place to be getting tidier by at least a fine margin, but that seemed to be impossible for the roomful of mad scientists. Too absorbed in their work. If only Sir Komlin wasn't always such a failure, maybe it would be slightly cleaner, but her brother's robots were just too dangerous to try ever again. Not that Komui really paid attention to his past failures. Lenalee happened to know that Sir Komlin V and VI were already in the final stages of development. At the very least, SK V was significantly smaller, but VI was almost the same size as the massive third model.

That aside, she found Allen and Lavi standing at Komui's desk, idly talking to her brother, and probably trying hard not to look bored out of their minds. She hurried over to them and reported in earning a sigh of relief from the two boys. Was her brother really that boring to talk to?

"Oh _there_ you are Lenalee!" Komui chimed, his eyes sparkling with the sheen of his sister complex, "You didn't have any trouble finding the place, did you?"

"No, big brother," she smiled but rolled her eyes.

"I could always make a new robot to carry you wherever—"

At this point, the word 'robot' coming out of the chief's mouth registered in he minds of everyone in the room, resulting in a resounding chorus of, "Oh _god!_ Please, no!"

Lenalee continued smiling, "Thank you for the offer, brother, but I think I'll pass," sighs of relief were heaved throughout the room. Illogically, it was then that her expression grew serious, "Anyway, you called the three of us down here for a reason, right?"

"Oh, that's right!" Komui turned back to face Allen and Lavi, his maniacal grin vanishing to be replaced by a picture of deadly seriousness, "Well, you see, this may not be a typical hunt down and destroy stray akuma mission."

"What does that mean?" Allen asked.

"Well, the finders who survived the attack said that their barriers were completely useless against any of the creatures that confronted them, even the weakest of them. However unlikely it may be, we may not be dealing with akuma here at all."

"So what do you think they were?" Lenalee asked.

"Zombies," Komui answered casually.

"_What!?_" they replied.

"Lenalee, I think your brother may really have completely lost it this time," Allen told his friend gravely.

"Well, I can't say I didn't see this coming…" she replied, her eyes downcast.

"So, uh, guys?" Lavi asked already carrying Komui over his shoulder, "Where do you want me to put him?"

"Unhand me you uncivilized gorilla!" he raved, sounding more ridiculous by the second, "The finders seriously said they were attacked by zombies!"

"Really?" Lenalee asked skeptically.

"Look, seriously, are you trying to mess with us? Because it's not that funny," Lavi added, putting the chief down.

"I mean anyone with any sense knows that zombies don't actually exist," Allen continued seriously, "they're make believe, like the chupacabra, or veggie-steaks.

"Oh really?" Komui retorted, "Well then, just look at the report for yourselves! They even managed to get a decent photograph of one." Komui tossed them a file that presumably contained the finders' report. Lavi opened it up and started speed-reading, reacting almost immediately as he saw the description of the creatures that attacked the finders.

"Outside Venice, _muttering_, shambling horde, _muttering_, rotting flesh, _muttering_, akuma barriers completely useless," Lavi flipped the page over and nearly jumped out of his skin, "_Gyah! That's freaky!_ Yeah, it's zombies alright."

"What did you see on the other page? Was it the picture?" Lenalee asked.

"Yep, and you'll want to keep a hand on your mouth because it is _beyond_ grotesque," Lavi grumbled. He flipped the page over and Lenalee barely held back a scream. Allen himself put a hand on his mouth and his stomach respectively. Behind him Timcampy fluttered over to have a look, at which point his casing seemed to shudder and he dived into Allen's coat pocket.

The photograph was a shot of what was obviously once a human. Of course, it was nowhere _near_ human anymore. Huge chunks of its flesh were missing, the upper right side of its skull had been picked clean either by decay, or the flies that were swarming around it, apart from its eye, which stared ahead horrifically from its bleached socket. Its nasal cavity had some skin hanging over it but was still clearly visible, and its gums, lips, and cheeks had mostly rotted away giving it a horrific toothy grin. It had obviously been in the ground for a long time…had obviously been dead, and was obviously _still_ dead. Yet it was standing up along with several other walking corpses in the background.

"What in the world…?" Allen asked wide-eyed, unable to look away from the hideous image.

"Well, the finders were calling them ghouls, so let's go with that," Lavi suggested.

"So you want us to investigate these things?" Allen asked seriously.

"Well you _are_ exorcists. Undead _can_ be classified as things that can be exorcized," Komui noted.

"So it says in the report that they were passing through a cemetery when the corpses began clawing their way out of their graves. There were some that were actually just skeletons," Lavi mused suddenly looking closer at the page, "Huh…_this_ is suspicious…"

"What do you mean, Lavi?" Allen asked, looking over the apprentice Bookman's shoulder at the report.

"It says that they appeared all at once," Lavi elaborated, "Doesn't that seem strange?"

There was a brief pause in which they considered a few possible implications of the event before anyone spoke again.

"You mean you think something—or some_one_—might be controlling them?" Allen guessed, the possibility sickening him, his face contorting into a frown.

"You got it," Lavi confirmed.

"Who would do something so awful as to desecrate an entire cemetery?" Lenalee gasped, appalled.

"Well, that's what we're sending you to find out I suppose. You're to leave tomorrow morning…except you Lenalee, you can stay here for however long you want."

"No, brother! I'm going to help out! I want to catch the monster who's doing this!"

"But Lenalee—!"

"No!"

"Please, don't leave me alone! Don't leave with those two adolescent boys! They're driven by nothing but their own rampaging hormones! They—"

"Please, big brother, just stop."

"And by the way, just for the record, I'm not an adolescent. I'm in my twenties and I went through puberty ages ago."

"_No! Lenalee!_" Komui yowled, even as the others left to get their belongings packed. He made to chase after them but found himself restrained by six sturdy arms.

"Calm down chief," Reever said evenly.

"Reever! Johnny! Number 65! You're all traitors!" wailed the chief, "You're all getting demerits!'

"Keep him pinned guys," Reever sighed, "I'll get the sedatives and antipsychotics."

Allen, Lavi and Lenalee left the room as Komui continued screaming hysterically.

"You know, veggie steak isn't make believe, right?" Lenalee quietly asked Allen.

"I choose not to believe that because of a traumatic eating experience," he responded, his smile never faltering, though he developed an utterly haunted look in his eyes. "If I let myself believe that I'd never be able to eat ever again. It was all a horrible nightmare, and we're never talking about this ever again."

* * *

"I'll have eight skewers of mitarashi dango, two Beef Wellingtons, linguini in pesto sauce, and nine bowls of pea soup. I'll also have a stack of pancakes, three vegetable stir-fries served on rice, seven baked potatoes, two pan seared Atlantic salmon fillets, and a fruit salad. _Oh! _Also I'd like two of the soufflés that you just finished, some fried bacon, and six cups of ramen noodles in chicken broth."

"Comin' right up li'l buddeh!" Jerry cheered with his usual enthusiasm.

Dinner never failed to be a fascinating experience when Allen was around.

Allen strolled over to Lavi and Lenalee's table, anxious for his order to be ready. Lenalee has a simple dish of spaghetti and meatballs sitting in front of her and, naturally, _that_ was what caught his attention before anything else. Something deep in his mind told him that he should really be more aware of the fact that she was dressed less conservatively than usual — That her summer uniform was unbuttoned at the top and was actually exposing some cleavage — but that spaghetti smelled _fantastic_ and it required his complete undivided attention.

"Hey, uh, are you going to finish that?" he asked the Chinese exorcist pleasantly as he sat down across from her, next to Lavi.

"I haven't started it yet," she replied just as pleasantly.

"Oh, uh…never mind then," he looked down at his lap.

Lenalee just giggled, twirling a mouthful of spaghetti onto her fork and daintily popped it into her mouth. Allen's mouth watered. Twenty minutes later Lenalee was still only half finished her pasta and Allen was struggling to remain a gentleman and repress the urge to shovel a girl's meal into his mouth.

"Allen Walker!" Jerry sang, his voice like a chorus of angels (bearing edible gifts).

"I don't know why I still expect him to sit down with a single dish of food," Lavi rolled his eyes as Allen rushed over to the kitchen window and returned carrying eight trays of food that would feed a newlywed couple for three days.

"Thanks Jerry!" Allen called back to the chef.

"My pleasure, li'l Buddeh!"

Lavi and Lenalee looked at the dishes of beautifully prepared meals almost sorrowfully. They didn't stand a chance against the bottomless pit that was Allen Walker's stomach.

"Shmm, whmm hh sbhhhtthh lnlllnn?" he asked with his mouth full of ramen.

"You're gonna have to repeat that," Lavi snickered with an impish grin.

Allen slurped up the rest of his third cup of noodles, swallowed, and took a deep breath.

"So, why the spaghetti, Lenalee?" he repeated, "Normally you get Chinese food."

"Well, it's best to get used to the kind of food I'll be eating for a little while," she answered cheerfully, "Besides, it's not as though I don't like Italian food."

"I guess. Oh, I can't wait to get a few pizzas!" he smiled giddily, already imagining getting a brick oven-cooked pizza with all the toppings even as he swallowed his last bowl of pea soup. Wait…No! Make that _four_ brick oven-cooked pizzas!

He'd finished four trays worth of food at this point. Next to him. Timcampy had surreptitiously made his way over to his stack of dango skewers and consumed all five dumplings on one of the skewers in quick succession. Lavi who had been watching the whole thing play out couldn't even begin to fathom where they went, considering that each of the dango were the same size as the golden golem. Timcampy belched, which finally alerted Allen to the fact that someone was filching his food.

"Timcampy! Why'd you eat those? You know they're my favorite!" he cried accusingly. The golem just shrugged his wings guiltily before flying up and settling himself on top of the exorcist's head.

"Allen, we've got news!" called an amicable, if not somewhat muffled voice. Allen smiled as he saw the familiar hooded finder with bandages wrapped around the lower half of his face.

"Toma! Nice to see you," Lenalee answered quickly.

"Toma?" Lavi asked, "I didn't even know he'd joined the reformed Order."

"You've been out of the loop since the war with the Noah ended, haven't you Lavi," Lenalee giggled.

"Yeah…well, I thought I earned some time off after all those shenanigans," Lavi grinned, blushing.

"Anyway, what do you have for us, Toma?" Allen asked.

"Well, I know you've already got a job on your hands right now, but I thought you might need to know this," Toma began, "There's been a sighting of an 'old friend.'"

"What do you mean by 'old friend?'" Lenalee asked, worried by the finder's tone.

"Well, nothing good as you can probably tell. But trust me, it could really be a problem. I'm assuming that you know exactly who this is," he held out a photograph of a figure that was easily recognized even from the distance it was taken from. The immaculate white skin was a dead giveaway.

"That's—It can't…he can't possibly be alive! How could Apocryphos—!" Allen yelped, "How is he even still around? When the Innocence that he was made of was destroyed, he disintegrated with it. Wait. That's redundant. I meant—"

"Yeah, I think we get the idea," Toma assured him, "But what about what happened when that Noah destroyed your Innocence. It was just scattered, and it rebuilt itself. If I might venture a guess, he probably did the same thing."

"I guess…" Allen said, tilting his head to the side in contemplation, "Anyway, I'll be sure to keep an eye out. I'll have to come up with a plan for what to do if I run into him. I don't want him assimilating me. That'd totally ruin my day." He grinned and continued eating.

Lavi gave Allen a look, unsure whether to laugh or grimace. It was a pretty sober thought after all. "How can he be so calm talking about his own untimely death?" Lavi wondered quietly aloud.

"I think he just takes things as they come," Lenalee whispered back.

There was a clatter of dishes as Allen finished his seventh tray of food and started on his last cup of ramen and his two Beef Wellingtons.

Lavi and Lenalee, having finished eating, watched as the first steak began vanishing into Allen's mouth.

"I'll bet you a nickel he can't finish," Lavi tried half-heartedly.

"_I'll_ bet _you_ twenty dollars, fifty pounds, and eight hundred yen that he _can_," Lenalee countered cheerfully.

"Yeah," he agreed, "you're probably right."

By the time the short exchange was over, Allen was popping the last bit of steak into his mouth and slurping up the remaining drops of soup still in his cup.

"Boy, was that tasty or what?" he grinned widely.

Lavi resisted letting his jaw fall to the floor, reminding himself that he'd seen his friend do the same thing over a hundred times already. "According to all the tests they ran on you, you're human through and through," he mused, "Chief Bak said that you were a weapon, and Apocryphos called you an anomaly. _I_ think that everyone should just shut up and accept that Allan Walker is nothing short of a force of nature similar to a plague of locusts, or maybe a rich man in a family owned supermarket."

"Hey! I'm not _that_ bad!" Allen responded defensively, raising his gloved hands peaceably.

"I think it all depends on how you look at it," Lenalee interjected, putting a finger to the corner of her mouth.

"Aww, Lenalee…Not you too," the white haired exorcist groaned.

"N-No! I didn't mean it in a bad way!"

Allen realized something and looked at Lavi curiously. "Hey, you weren't around when most of those things were said about me. How do you even know that?"

"It's all on record. I go through the archives from time to time. You know, when Komui isn't around."

Lenalee frowned, "Isn't that a bit, I don't know, intrusive?"

"Maybe, but you've gotta admit the old Black Order left a mess. We have to know how what they did in order to fix their mistakes."

Lenalee looked away. She knew about the Order's misdeeds, but even with that knowledge, she couldn't find it in her heart to blame the only family she knew. And so she just nodded, her eyes downcast.

* * *

After heading back to their rooms to fetch their belongings, the three exorcists met back up at the front gates, ready to set out on their mission.

"So, Venice huh?" prompted Lavi.

Lenalee nodded, "I've always wanted to ride on a gondola."

"I'll see about renting one the day after we've finished our investigation," Allen grinned, hefting his suitcase into the boat that would take them to the train station. "Zombies and romantic pastimes don't really go very well together." Timcampy shook his head from side to side as if to emphasize his master's point.

"You've got a point," Lenalee said seriously, "Work comes first, not to mention we need to see if the finders that didn't make it back are okay."

Lavi shook his head, his jaw set, "I wouldn't get my hopes up… I've got a pretty chilling thought about what their fates are, and you probably don't want to hear it.

They shared a dark look, nodded and set off.

Next stop: Italy.

* * *

In an old Italian graveyard, a young man in a brown coat and eyeglasses was visiting his late sister, the victim of a tragic carriage accident, when he noticed a strange, shifting black cloud, seeming to shiver its way out of the air and onto the ground.

The sky was overcast tonight, but there was enough light for him to make out the strange shape. Curious, he approached the cloud's landing site. There wasn't any response from the shifting anomaly, and he cautiously drew ever closer to it. It seemed a lot more solid now than it did from further away. Odd.

He was a few paces away, when a smooth hollow voice seemed to emanate from the cloud.

"Greetings, mortal," it rasped, "A pleasure, I'm sure. What is your name?"

"Wh-who are you?" the man asked.

"Tell me who you are, and perhaps I shall tell you," the cloud whispered.

"M-my name is Christoph," the man said hesitantly.

"Christoph," the raspy voice repeated musingly, "A fine name."

Growing more and more curious by the second, Christoph decided to ask another question. "If you don't mind me asking, what exactly are you?"

"Not who? Just what?" the empty voice answered, sounding vaguely amused, "Very well: I am what you see, and little more. Tell me Christoph," it continued, it's tone indicating that it intended to change the subject, "You had a sister named Lucia, did you not? She died a month ago when a bridge collapsed and her coach fell into a river?"

Christoph was astonished.

"Y-y-yes! H-how?" he stammered.

"Drowning, a terrible way to die…" the voice continued, seemingly ignoring his question, its voice as hollow as ever.

"How did you know that?" the young man repeated frantically.

"The rooks saw it, as they always do. The crows and the ravens show me all they see,"

At this point, the cloud solidified completely into a feathery mass and a great many crows dispersed, a cacophony of cawing resounding throughout the lonely cemetery. Standing where the cloud of birds was moments ago, was a man. He wore a robe made of black feathers, with a distinctive mask made to look like a gaunt raven. So focused was he on the mask that he nearly missed seeing the feathery black wings sprout from the man's back.

"Are-are you an angel of some sort?" he gasped.

The black winged being seemed to find this immensely funny; its hollow laugh echoing throughout the graveyard.

"Not an angel, Christoph…" the creature answered. It raised its arm and Christoph was horrified to see skeletal fingers emerge from beneath its robe.

"Lucia, would like to see you again," the creature hissed, it's hollow voice now dripping with malevolence, "Do turn around for her."

Nearly frozen with fright, Christoph managed to turn, shakily, and he nearly fainted at the sight of his sister's body, partially decayed and still looking like a drowned corpse, standing upright and seeming to stare at him. A hollow moan came from her throat as a faint breeze shook her exposed vocal chords.

"What kind of sorcery is this?" he cried. He tried to run, but he suddenly felt that the bones that made up the black-winged creature's hand were firmly gripping the back of his head.

"You asked me a moment ago if I was an angel," the creature's hollow voice echoed behind its mask. "The truth is… I'm just the opposite."

"It's time for dinner, my beauties."

Ravens from all around the cemetery converged and began attacking him, but it was the corpse of his sister that truly horrified him. He barely even noticed the crows tearing his chest apart. Before he was unfortunate enough to feel any of his organs being ripped out, Laura bit deeply into his throat. His blood froze in his veins, and his spine turned to ice. And then he knew no more.

…

The black winged creature crushed the man's head like an egg, and tossed him, and his feasting sister's remains to the side where his ravens made short work of him.

"This man should make a fine meal, and a fine servant," it whispered, adjusting its mask and staining it with the bloodied bones of his fingers.

…

Tonight was indeed a beautiful night.

* * *

**Author's note: For the love of god, please don't review unless you're writing a message saying that you'd like to audition.**

**If you audition, please have the next chapter prepared, so that you can send it to me right after you post your request. If I give you the go-ahead to continue, I will send you additional information regarding the story, and you can have it progress however you like—within reason—as long as each point in the plot is covered.**

**Thank you for taking an interest**

**Also, just for the record; please do not favorite or follow this. It will _never_ be updated with new content unless I feel that the rules need editing. There is no point in watching it.**


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